Cruise lines are big losers on Wall Street this week — and there are few winners

Investors had nowhere to hide this week. Following Thursday’s stock market drubbing, there were just four S&P 500 companies trading in positive territory.

And after Friday’s massive Wall Street slide, that list of winners was down to one.

Regeneron is still clinging to gains even though it isn’t one of the biotechs working on a vaccine for the coronavirus outbreak that has Wall Street spooked.

The company has a drug called Eylea that treats macular degeneration and swelling in the retina. Shares of Regeneron are up this week due to some setbacks with a rival drug made by Novartis.

Gilead Sciences, a biotech that is hopeful that one of its current drugs can treat coronavirus, was one of the other four stocks that was up for the week, at least through through Thursday.

But on Friday Gilead lost all those weekly gains. It was joined by Clorox, which had been rallying on hopes that people would buy more of its disinfectant wipes. Exchange owner CME Group was the only other weekly winner through Thursday and it plunged Friday, too.

Still, these stocks are among the very few “winners” on Wall Street this week, only because their share prices haven’t completely fallen off a cliff.

The market pullback has been so severe that even sectors previously considered safe bets if stocks plummeted and bond yields tumble to record lows were caught in the crossfire.

Utilities and real estate stocks, two groups that pay very high dividend yields that are even more attractive now given how low the 10-year and 30-year Treasury rates are, both dropped more than 10% this week.

Not surprisingly, many of the market’s worst performers were companies tied to the travel and tourism industry.

Cruise companies Carnival, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Lines all fell around 20% this week due to worries about sick passengers on ships. Airline stocks have been hit hard too.

And concert promoter Live Nation is down almost 20% this week — even though the concert promoter and Ticketmaster owner’s stock rallied a bit Friday after it reported better than expected sales.